While it’s a positive sign that educators see value in the growth mindset research and believe they can implement it in their classrooms, the deceptively simple idea has led to some confusion and misperceptions about what a growth mindset really is and how teachers can support it in the classroom. It’s easy to lump growth mindset in with other education catchphrases, like “resiliency” or “having high expectations,” but growth mindset actually has a much more concrete definition. As Eduardo Briceño wrote in a recent post for MindShift, “It is the belief that qualities can change and that we can develop our intelligence and abilities.”

This simple idea can lead to big changes in learners, but it has been commonly misinterpreted to mean that if teachers praise students for working hard, they will develop a growth mindset. In many cases that isn’t true and students will feel that praise is disingenuous. Briceño explains it this way: “Students often haven’t learned that working hard involves thinking hard, which involves reflecting on and changing our strategies so we become more and more effective learners over time, and we need to guide them to come to understand this.”

To foster growth mindsets in students, teachers can coach students to try different learning strategies that make the brain work smarter. Educator praise can be used to acknowledge specific strategies students have tried and can push students to reflect on themselves as learners. This process is more complex than it looks and ultimately should help lead students to become more independent thinkers.

Growth mindset is also not a panacea for low achievement or education inequality, although the fervor with which some districts have adopted the idea might lead one to believe that. Critics like Alfie Kohn point out that no individual attitude shift is going to overcome the very real structural inequalities that exist in schools. He worries that focusing on mindsets will not only mask those bigger problems, but could undermine the imperative to provide compelling learning experiences that lead students to discover an innate love of learning.

Another common way of boiling down the mindset research is to tell students that “mistakes are good; we learn from mistakes.” While that can be true, not all mistakes are worth pursuing. Some mistakes are just sloppy and others are made in such a high-stakes environment. Reflecting on these kinds of mistakes can improve performance next time, but they aren’t necessarily the most fruitful kinds of mistakes.* Mistakes that lead to the most learning are the ones made when students are stretching outside their comfort zones to grasp an idea that’s just out of reach. Or, when someone has an “aha” moment after doing something she thought was right but then realized was a mistake based on new information. Reflecting on these mistakes, and formulating a new plan of action based on them, is what makes them powerful.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

It’s exciting that this research has been around long enough and has reached enough educators that many districts and schools are already trying to put the research into practice. Their successes and failures are important to share as educators work to figure out how to implement it.

Many schools quickly realized that growth mindsets are not only important to students, they are crucial for educators trying to make change. And helping educators to develop their own growth mindsets hinges on positive working environments and trust at school. Educators have a hard time taking risks in their teaching practice if they believe the outcome must be perfect the first time. And yet, one of the most important ways to instill a growth mindset in students is to model the disposition as teachers, making it even more crucial that district and school leaders create a climate conducive to growth mindsets in adults.

Other schools focus on normalizing struggle in the classroom by honoring students who are honest about their difficulties and making thinking transparent to everyone. In this Teaching Channel video produced in partnership with PERTS, second-grade teacher Maricela Montoy-Wilson models for other educators what it looks like to praise specific strategies. She celebrates the public mistakes her students make in math and makes them feel proud of how their brains grow in those moments.

GROWTH MINDSET AND MATH

Approaching the world with a growth mindset can be very liberating. It gives educators and students freedom to try new approaches, reflect on the positives and negatives, and then try again. But somehow this process is easier for students and teachers to believe in subjects like English or science. Even students who understand that their brain can grow and change with effort, and believe that to be true in some areas of their life, persist in a fixed mindset about math.

Many find math to be the most difficult and hated subject in school. In some ways that’s not so surprising, since many math classes are set up to value speed over careful reasoning and often offer closed questions requiring one right answer. When a student struggles in that type of classroom structure, it becomes difficult to believe she can grow or change her abilities. The questions asked and skills valued are projecting the opposite message.

*This paragraph was modified to clarify the idea that people can learn from all mistakes, but some mistakes are more fruitful for learning.

Love the concept that “approaching the world with a growth mindset can be very liberating…”

That statement brings to mind the vast depths of imagination, the stem of creativity. Even the most quantitative puzzles require a thinker, we need reminders that the imaginative mind is essential in all fields.

Well-written piece.

Barb Persoon

One of the joys of mathematics is the
fact that there are many trails one can take to arrive at that one correct
answer. Part of teaching a growth mindset in the math classroom involves the
exploration of these possible routes. There are a few obstacles to this. Given
the amount of Common Core concepts that are required to be taught in the
average high school class, it is difficult to have the time to investigate all of these
ideas and their various pathways. You also need to deal with the fixed mindsets
that are currently present. After ten years of textbook math, many students
have decided that if they do not “get it” in the first three minutes, then they
never will. We need to dissuade them from this discouragement and try to excite
their curiosity. The classroom atmosphere and the teacher’s level of enthusiasm
are both important in this endeavor. The focus will need to switch to understanding
and application, not just guessing the magic formula to get the right answer and a good grade.

CHIGuy

As someone who’s kid has gone through K-1 Common Core math, the Common Core process has grown on me. At this grade level, Common Core math teaches exactly what you say you is the joy of math, that “there are many trails one can take to arrive at that one correct answer.” And that’s why it takes so much time. That time is spent exploring the many strategies you can use to solve math problems and that is what frustrates parents that I speak with to no end.

Parents just want their kids to memorize the addition and multiplication tables because that’s how they did it. But the Common Core methodology stresses explaining kids reasoning, including coming up with more than 1 way to do simple addition.

For example, to compute 7+15, my kid had to explain that you can [1] start with 15 and count 7 spots up or [2] start with 15 and “move” 5 from the 7 to make 20 then include the remaining 2 or [3] group the 5 and 7 together to make a 10 group and 2 remainder, then the 2 tens make 20 with the additional 2 for 22. When I was growing up, all we did was count up. We had to eventually figure out broader understanding and not everyone figured this out.

So, my point is, your complaint about Common Core taking up too much time seems to miss that the extra time is spent on what you want math teachers to teach: a deeper understanding of math.

Jim Reif

Having taught high school math for 20 years, the concept of perseverance needs to get a lot of intentional attention as we teach the growth mindset. I agree Common Core is causing may teacher to feel pressure to keep moving through the curriculum, and students then feel they need to get it in 3 minutes. Now as an administrator, I have many students wanting to drop Algebra 2 because “they just don’t get it” but they are unwilling to look at YouTube or tutors or study groups. They want it right now from the teacher and if it doesn’t happen they give up. Anything we can do to produce more perseverance and the growth mindset in our youth is effort well spent in this day of instant knowledge and gratification brought about by cell phones. I believe the idea of immersing the Growth Mindset from day one as freshman has a lot of potential, a lot more than cramming for another standardized test.

Emily Harward

Thanks for this article! I’m in my 12th year of teaching science to junior high school students. I especially liked the last section on growth mindset and math, although I think a fixed mindset is also very prevalent in other subjects, including science and art. (Over the years, I have had many parents tell me, “Sally just doesn’t get science. And neither did I. We’re just not good at it,” as if it is a fact and nothing can be done about it.)

I know that allowing students to make mistakes leads to better understanding than if I tell them how to solve a problem, set up an experiment, etc. There are many times in class when I can tell that what a student or group of students is doing isn’t going to work out, but I help them along until it becomes clear to them why their solution isn’t going to work. I love that moment when the light clicks on and they understand the problem with what they are doing. That is something that can’t be taught; it can only be learned from making mistakes. As test scores and grades overshadow true learning as a measure of academic achievement, many students don’t have the gumption to stick with a problem or have interest in understanding it. I notice that especially in my honors sections, students will give up very easily if they don’t immediately get the “right” answer.

Just wondering why this article was written with the assumption that all readers know, in advance, what the author is talking about. No exposition.

Jennifer Harrist

Great article. As I have been reading and studying more on growth mindset, especially as it relates to math, the question I have asked myself the most is: How do we, as educators, use this information to help students face failure? They can’t get everything correct and neither can we. Before we can help students learn from their mistakes, we, the adults in the room, have to stop being terrified of making mistakes ourselves. Multi-billion dollar companies like GE, Pixar an Apple, to name only a few, understand that mistakes are essential to development and growth.

In education, the learning industry, we have yet to embrace mistakes as method to grow, change and learn for all stakeholders. As teachers,
we are afraid of stepping out and looking foolish or being wrong. We are terrified to the point of educational paralysis, keeping us from learning and growing. If we can’t learn and grow, how can we expect that of our students?

In all honesty, I struggle with the fear of making mistakes in front of others constantly. In front of students, I am able to quickly use it as a teaching moment, “See, I make mistakes, too.” We then, as a class, correct it.

This past year I took part in a professional development series on fostering Algebraic thinking in all students. As part of our class work, we would be given a challenging problem and asked to think through our approach to solving this problem and arrive at a solution. Through these problems, I found myself feeling as my students feel. What if I make a mistake and don’t get the “right” answer? What if I completely mess up in front of these other math teachers and my co-workers? Am I still qualified for my position as math specialist?

As we sat there talking through the problems and different strategies, I had to quiet that inner voice of fear. Reminding myself that making mistakes are a part of the learning process was a battle. I made mistakes each day of our study. I got manywrong answers and sometimes I was not on the correct path or even close!

After each problem solving session, we were able to come together and share our process. What a relief to find that I was not the only
making those mistakes or getting wrong answers! And from these sessions I was able to see how others arrived at a correct solution or adjust my own process and thinking to arrive at the answer myself. In all of that, the course instructor, my co-workers and other participants worked together to help each other learn. Mistakes can be beneficial, as mentioned above, in the right context.

I left that series thinking more about how I can help my own students overcome their fear of public failure and shame in order to foster learning and growth.

“One of the most powerful moves a teacher or parent can make is in changing the messages they give about mistakes and wrong answers in
mathematics,” (Boaler, 2016, p 15).

It all starts with me and with you. While there are right and wrong answers in math, helping students find the path to get there is part of the learning process and helping them get past their fear of failure. I am not proposing that we put “failure on a pedestal,” an outcome of grit and growth mindset suggested some. However, I argue that we have to remove the stigma of mistakes to help our students learn, and help ourselves learn as well.

The understanding that mistakes are not failure but part of the process has to be modeled by us first. That means being honest with our students and fostering a climate in which mistakes are expected as part of learning. There is value in success and in error, and a balance of both is necessary in making us better educators and champions of learning.

marumakoto

Very well said. Thanks for inspiring me with your words. 🙂

Patty Henss Garrett

I appreciate that you acknowledge the importance of growth mindset in educators. So many times teachers are seen by students and parents as the bestower of knowledge, and not seen as learners themselves. I love to learn and grow with my students, and making mistakes in front of them is a great opportunity to model perseverance and the growth mindset.

Author

Katrina Schwartz

Katrina Schwartz is a journalist based in San Francisco. She’s worked at KPCC public radio in LA and has reported on air and online for KQED since 2010. She’s a staff writer for KQED’s education blog MindShift.